


kicked and keening

by supernatasha



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canonical Rape/Non-con, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-03
Updated: 2013-07-03
Packaged: 2017-12-17 13:14:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/867947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supernatasha/pseuds/supernatasha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody says her real name. Nobody remembers anymore, perhaps. She finds herself wanting to hear the syllables of the name her mother had given her, for someone to say them out loud, the wind, the snow, the broken man outside her chambers who chants his own wrong name all night. </p><p>It rhymes with pain, pain, pain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	kicked and keening

The girl is dead. The girl is alone. Darkness is her only friend. It comes, it goes.

Sometimes, it does not go. It spends hours in the base of her spine and sprawls in her chamber, refusing to leave. She tries to speak to it, but darkness does not return her answers much as the gods do not and the servants and maids do not.

She realizes, finally, when her scars have been reopened and the fat lazy drips from her pale skin are red and black, that she is the darkness.

;

Outside her chambers, she hears a gentle murmuring. She sits with the side of her ears pressed against the wall until the words become clear, repeating over and over like a chant:

"Reek Reek, it rhymes with seek,

It rhymes with meek,

It rhymes with freak, freak, freak."

;

Later, when Ramsay has had his way and she's left alone violated and disgusted in the dark, she drinks back her wailing. There are fresh bruises blossoming on her arms and waist, echoes of teeth and fingers. A tree shakes violently in her, leaves tumbling to the soil. The words return to her and she whispers them softly to herself:

"Jeyne Jeyne, it rhymes with rain,

It rhymes with chain,

It rhymes with pain, pain, pain."

;

Arya Stark had been strong. Her body was not soft the way Sansa's had been, neither was her mind as inclined toward idle gossip. Arya had taken a sword in her hand and ice in her veins. She had been hunted and she had escaped, had shed her identity like a wolf sheds its coat in the changing seasons.

Jeyne understands that now. Hers is a dangerous name to endure this winter.

She is always torn between hating her- the girl who had left her share of punishment to some other poor soul, or admiring her- the girl who had managed to flee from her horrifying fate.

(she can hate herself for staying, for being stupid enough to be captured.)

(she can admire herself for surviving, for being strong enough to be alive.)

( _no, she cannot_.)

;

There is no taste left; everything touching her tongue is stale, dust and ash. She forces herself to sit through supper beside the monster, unwilling to fade away into abysmal nothing, another victim of this long winter.

One of the Lords, she cannot tell which through a constant film of tears, bows before her. He frowns and fragments break through; recognition, disbelief. “Arya?” he asks.

She nods. She always nods when they ask her who she is, and she nods now. “M’lord,” she replies, trying to ignore how painful the name is falling on her ears.

Nobody says her real name. Nobody remembers anymore, perhaps. She finds herself wanting to hear the syllables of the name her mother gave her, for someone to say them out loud, the wind, the snow, the broken man outside her chambers who chants his own wrong name all night.

Poor broken man. Theon had always smiled. Now his smile has become a caricature, lips chapped and tongue gruesome, missing teeth, muscles contorting into something resembling a grimace. There is no longer joy in his vacant expression. When they happen across her own eyes, she is unsure whether or not he can see. It seems he is looking through her.

(she is nothing. is that why he looks through her?)

(she is glass she is water she is rain.)

( _jeyne jeyne, it rhymes with rain_.)

;

She dreams of slitting Ramsay's throat sometimes. She imagines the blade of a dagger and how it would feel to run it across his skin, how it would slide smoothly like needle slid in fabric or icing on lemon cakes. When he slaps her across the face and she tastes blood, she thinks the coppery warm taste flooding her tongue is from his veins, that she is drinking his life to sate the growing beast howling in her belly.

It is then that she learns she is pregnant.

;

"Theon," she says his name with some difficulty, swollen red eyes, hoarse voice, fingers clenched so her knuckles are white. "Theon, help me."

He looks up at her, curled on the floor outside her chambers. "My name is Reek," he tells her.

She wants to sob and stomp and dive her fist into his gut. She wants to shriek in his face to wake up. "Your name is Theon. Please, you must help me."

"My name is Reek," he says, louder.

"Theon," she struggles to keep control. She doesn’t want to shout. The others always leave them alone, Ramsay’s favorite pets, but she doesn’t want to take the chance of someone coming to check. "Theon."

"Reek?" This time, when the word leaves his mouth, he must taste doubt. It is a question. His head rises off the freezing floor.

"Theon."

"Jeyne."

It is her name. It was her name.

"Help me."

"There is no help. No help for Arya, no help for Jeyne, no help for Theon, no help for Reek," he smiles at her.

"I'm with child."

Theon's smile dies away on his lips. An intensity comes upon his features. She thinks that she has seen it before, a lifetime ago when he would return from hunts with Robb, a sword in his hand, just before he winks up at the ladies of the house. There is no wink now. His gaze flits to the empty stairwell and back at her. "Does he know?"

She shakes her head, throat dry and chest heaving, not trusting herself to speak any further. Just getting it out has taken a toll on her.

Theon's smile returns, wider. "Jeyne Jeyne, it rhymes with insane."

Her legs buckle. She shuts the door to Theon's grinning face. It's all she can do not to break down and cry.

(her dreams turn to nightmares. will she give birth to human or to monster? or to animal?)

(ramsay is an animal, roused and roaring. theon is an animal, kicked and keening.)

( _but the animal theon has become is not cruel, only sad, only tired_.)

;

“You’re pathetic,” he growls in her ear, drags his nails from her neck and down her breasts, drawing blood. She gasps at the pain and tears form in every corner of her being, run down her skin. He slams into her and chortles. The sound grates against her pores and her insides throb.

She does not beg, she will not cry. She knows nothing would ever stop him. Fists clenched by her sides, she bears the aching and stench, of rotting flesh and alcohol and every vile odor she’s encountered. He comes inside her and pulls out, sated.

“You like that?” he demands, harsh and petulant.

She nods mutely.

His laughter, like the bark of a hyena, follows him out of the room. She flinches at the slamming of the door, rocking it’s hinges. The front of her gown has been torn and her smallclothes are scattered on the floor. She pulls up her knees, feeling the scratches he left on her body sting, and folds in on herself. Instinctively, one arm circles around her belly, just beginning to show in the slightest. She will need to cleanse herself for thousands of years before she can feel safe.

When the door creaks open again, she holds back a noise of anguish and turns to face the monster again.

It isn’t a monster; it’s Theon. In the dim light, his silhouette looks like a hunched old maester, mangled.

“Theon?” her voice is raw from screams she held back.

“Reek,” he corrects, brow furrowed.

She sits up and tries to collect herself, pulling up the tatters of fabric Ramsay has left in his wake. “Reek,” she whispers in despair.

“I brought you something,” he says, holding out a hand, something resting in the flat of his palm, on the leather of the gloves he always wore.

She watches him with distrust. A trick? A game? Did the monster send Theon? With trembling fingers, she reaches for his hand. She feels something cold, metallic. She grasps it, blunt then sharp then light.

A dirk.

It's small, the size of her hand from wrist to the tips of her fingers, but it glints in what meager light it can find, seeking out the gleaming candles. The edge looks wicked, sinful.

"Theon," she breathes, feeling the weight of the dirk. She clutches it with both hands, a surge of power stirring in her chest between her lungs.

His hand comes up and she winces at the movement out of habit, but he only holds a gloved finger lightly to her swollen lips. "Reek," he tells her with some force. Then his gaze moves down her chin to her neck. The scratch, still bleeding, wet. She is aware of her torn gown exposing her breasts to Theon; she does not think she has any modesty left, nor shame. And she loathes letting go of the dirk in her grip. She stands still as the pressure lifts off her lips.

"Don't touch it," her tone is brittle.

"It looks like it hurts."

"It does."

"Will the maids bring something for it?"

She shakes her head. "Not unless he asks them to."

Theon hesitates, eyes lingering over the wound, before asking, "Will they bring you moon tea? Poppy milk?"

She feels a familiar sinking sensation, the one she felt when she thought she could convince the serving girls to help her but they had hopped away like frightened little rabbits. "They'll bring me nothing. They're too scared."

"You have a weapon now," he reassures her. "Use it, Jeyne."

She jolts at the word, familiar but foreign, a strange word coming from a strange man. She nearly bristles and corrects him before she remembers. The first time he had said it, she hadn’t reveled, hadn’t savored. "Say it again," she insists.

"Jeyne."

A sound outside the chambers makes their eyes widen, shiny pupils wide. Theon bolts to the door and is out without another word.

She waits and waits but no one bursts in. A false alarm.

She hides the dirk among her bedsheets and thinks on the uselessness of Theon's gift. She is much too cowardly to wield it. Perhaps if she has Arya's training or Sansa's courage, she could plunge the dirk into Ramsay's heart. But all she has is fear and the wrong name.

(if it's a son, i want to name him after my father, Vayon.)

(if it's a daughter, i want to name her after Lady of Winterfell, Catelyn.)

( _if it's a monster, i will smother it as it sleeps it in its cradle with my bare hands_.)

;

A day passes; she doesn't touch the dirk.

Theon looks down at her belly as she passes him and avoids looking at her until she leaves the hall.

;

A week passes; she doesn't touch the dirk.

One of the maids who helps her into the bath runs probing fingers over her belly. The woman mouths an apology and drops her hands back into soapy water.

;

A fortnight passes; she doesn't touch the dirk.

One of Ramsay's men stares at her belly through supper and whispers in Ramsay's ear. She wonders how much wine she would have to drink until the unborn child drowns in her womb. She wonders if she should fall and hit the ground on her stomach.

Ramsay takes her back up the chambers and tells her in a somber tone, "If anything happens to the baby, I will flay the skin off your feet and smash every bone in your knees so you never walk again. You don't need legs to give me sons."

She has to struggle not to shudder. "I understand."

Ramsay doesn't touch her when he leaves. For this, at least, she is grateful.

;

He has not been in to see her in days, satisfying himself with other women, keeping her whole and intact to give birth to his offspring, leaving her in whatever peace she can still manage.

When she’s certain he won’t come, she opens her door and kneels beside Theon.

“M’lady,” he says.

“Say my name. My whole name.”

“Ary-”

“I said _my name!”_ she snarls, holding the dirk against his throat. He swallows against the blade, the apple in his neck bobbing, and stares at her with wide terrified eyes. It gives her the sickest sort of satisfaction to be someone else’s reason of fear; she can almost understand why Ramsay does it.

_Almost._

“Jeyne. Jeyne Pool,” he whispers it like a secret shared between two, an intimate reminder.

Her hand drops. She presses her lips to his cheek, feeling the stubble and salty skin with lines of haunting grief etched into it. He quakes under the touch, tiny ripples on a still lake. “Thank you, Theon,” she tells him quietly.

She retreats back into her chambers before he has a chance to correct her.

(reek, he’ll tell her. my name is reek.)

(reek, reek, he’ll chant, it rhymes with speak.)

 ( _but if his name is reek, then her name is arya and that would drive her mad_.)

;

“They said in council today that Jon Snow is riding south from the Wall. He’s riding for us,” Theon’s voice is taut with hope he dare not let himself feel. She understands the feeling; she’s trying to hold it back as well, choking it down when it bubbles from her chest. She’s thirsting to hear the sound of her name again.

“Ramsay will defend us,” she despairs. “He’ll send his men and dogs and ride out himself.”

“If we’re lucky,” Theon says, wistful, “he won’t come back.”

She closes her eyes and sees him towering over her, tastes foul breath in her mouth, feels his fingers inside her body, hears the laughter shrieking from his throat. The images will be with her for a lifetime. “He always comes back.”

;

He finally comes to see her, soon after Theon told her of Jon Snow. Her scars have begun to fade, most scabbed over, others yellow and nearly melted back into the cream of her skin. Just seeing him makes her recall all her aches and wounds.

“Take off your gown,” he commands. “I want to see it.”

“See it, m’lord?” she asks.

“My son,” he snaps and crosses his arms over his chest. “Don’t keep me waiting.”

Trembling fingers, jerky movements, she unbuttons the back of her modest dress and lets it fall, unlaces her corset, pulling off smallclothes with hesitation. The chill of the air hits her delicate form and she sways on her feet, suffocating without anything on.

Ramsay stares at her stomach, eyebrows pulled together. “Can I still fuck you?”

Straightening her back and disregarding the cold seeping into her bones, she says, “M’lord, it is better if you don’t, for the safety and well-being of our son.”

_Please, anything so he doesn’t touch me again._

He stands there for a moment longer, staring at her, running his gaze over her extending belly and the scars on her neck and her erect nipples and her thighs and she wants to cover herself or hide or run or do anything but let him touch her. Finally, he grumbles to himself like venom dripping and leaves the chamber, and her legs nearly give out from under her.

She scrambles to refasten her gown when the door opens again and Theon limps inside. “Did he hurt you?” Theon demands.

She shakes her head.

“Why didn’t you use it?” he hisses, and she knows what he’s talking about, even if he doesn’t say it, even if it’s tucked deep into the feather mattress between her furs.

She glares at him and the adrenaline in her veins from Ramsay’s presence solidifies, lending her disappointment a new sort of fury. “You gave me a knife. _A knife,_ Theon! What exactly am I meant to do with it? Stick it in his cock? Carve out his heart? Attack his men when they rush in to see what’s happened?”

“You’re meant to…” he trails off. Then, with a deep breath. “I don’t know. I didn’t want you to be in here alone with him defenseless, vulnerable.”

“You think giving me a weapon I don’t know how to use is making me less vulnerable?”

“It’s better than nothing! It’s better than the emptiness we’ve carried since we got here,” he urges, his face close to her so she can see every wrinkle, the dark circles under his eyes.

“What do you care, _Reek_?” she cries, and the words strike him like a slap.

“I care,” his voice cracks, “because you are the last bit of Winterfell left I haven’t destroyed, the last tiny breathing bit that isn’t torched and burnt to ash, Jeyne.”

She holds back a sob clawing its way up the roof of her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she says between gasps, for all of it, for the hand they have been dealt, with the long winter, for calling him by the wrong name. and her knees buckle. Before she can hit the floor, Theon’s there, grabbing her just before she gives up.

“I’ll do it,” he murmurs. “I’ll get us out.”

“Don’t play hero,” she warns him. “You’ll get us both killed.”

“I don’t think I could stand to lose you.”

She looks up at him, for once looking up instead of down, his jaw is set and his arms grip her tight- not in a painful way, like Ramsay does, but in a comforting security she’s come to associate with Theon. She leaves his embrace and kneels on the floor beside him.

Impulsively, she reaches out and grazes the clenched muscles in his jaw with the tips of her fingers. He jerks back, then leans back into her touch. “And did you think I could stand to lose you?” she murmurs softly, so he strains just to hear the words and he brings his face closer, just as she wants.

When her lips press against his, a jolt runs through her at the taste of flashing lightning, and something steadier- the distant rumbling of thunder and standing on the parapets with Sansa’s hand in hers, waiting and watching for the storm to get nearer and letting loose peals of laughter with every drop of rain. She tastes home, quivering under howling winds and covered in a thick blanket of snow, shy in the wan light of a sun hiding behind clothes, but home all the same. She kisses this husk of a man, and tastes the flavor of the puppet who answered to a savage, who had lost his mind to cruelty, and she knows under the mask is a kraken who had joked and fought and lived once long ago.

Theon kisses back and she wonders what he tastes on her tongue.

(does he taste a broken girl yearning for the comforts of home?)

(does he taste the undercurrent of strong arya?)

( _what if he tastes jeyne?_ )

;

A maid tells her in a thin voice that Jon Snow should arrive any day. Ramsay’s soldiers have been prepared for days to march into battle. Most of the men have already left to strategic places in the woods with Roose Bolton, all other than Ramsay’s best men and the monster himself.

She dares not hope.

She knows with the first roaring scream outside her chambers that something is wrong, something is very very wrong. The door comes flying open, crashing into wooden walls, and she clings to the wall behind her back. Ramsay, drunk, limbs loose, charges toward her. Jeyne cowers toward the floor.

One of Ramsay’s men, she cannot remember his name now, tries to hold him back. “We need to leave; we need to leave with the rest of them!”

But Ramsay struggles and growls like a rabid animal, finally turning on the man and backhanding him so he goes sprawling back. “Fuck off!” Ramsay yells. “Get out of my sight, wait in the hall. I’ll be out to ride when my pleasures are done,” he slurs and the lewd look he gives Jeyne makes her want to vomit and scrub her body clean. The man slams the door shut on his way out.

“M’lord, please,” she begs, “The child- your- your son. Think of your son!”

“If I die riding into battle, what good will a son be to me?” he demands harshly, taking a fistful of her hair and yanking her up. “Get on the bed; take off your clothes,” he orders her, and begins undoing the front of his breeches.

She doesn’t move until his leather belt is in his grasp. “I said, get on the bed. If you don’t…” he lets the threat hang and flicks his belt so the metallic buckle makes a sound that she feels down in her teeth.

She scrambles for the bed, some sort of chaos beating desperate wings against her.

It must be today. It has to be. She’ll never get another chance, not one presenting itself as lavishly as this one is.

Ramsay stumbles toward her on legs that don’t want to hold him, and her fingers slip between the sheets and form a hold around the dirk. She twists her hand behind her back. He seems to have forgotten what he asked her and snakes one arm up her thigh, searching for the place where her stockings end and skin begins.

She steels herself and, with a swift fierce kick, smashes Ramsay in the face as hard as she can.

“Ungh,” he falls back with a moan and clutches his dripping nose, the red an alarming shade, so red, more red than anything she had imagined pouring from his atrocious form, nothing like the acid she had envisioned.

With a sound reminiscent of screeching, he throws himself back onto her, elbow digging into her ribs. It nearly knocks the breath from her lungs. His face shoves into hers, hooting, the stink of decay from sharp teeth overwhelming. She moves the hand holding the dirk and thrusts it into his throat.

For a moment, beautiful silence.

Time slows.

Shock plays on Ramsay’s features, blood oozing from his face and squirting out of the wound in his neck. His breeches pool around his feet and he falls back hard to the floor, wide eyed.

Time returns as a dull thudding in her ears, her babe quickening in her womb. She leaps off the bed and straddles his body, for the first and last time in her life. Her hands, already slippery with his blood, grip the end the dirk and pull through his throat. It’s nothing like her dreams, where the dagger would slide smoothly across. Instead, his flesh refuses to give, resisting the steel blade, and he spasms violently under her. The bucking nearly throws her off, the death throes of a great beast, but she holds on until the dirk reaches open air and slips from her fingers.

Making gurgling noises, Ramsay bleeds out on the floor beneath her.

Some mad churning beast inside her quiets at last. Her bloody hands touch her belly. She feels the babe move, a feeble thrashing, definite life. She wants to cry, but the tears don’t come.

The door creaks open and dread floods her. She clambers for the dirk, bruising both knees.

“Jeyne?” Theon whispers, taking in the scene before him.

 _Theon_ , she thinks she says it, but not out loud, only in the hollow space of her head.

It only takes a few seconds for Theon to jump into action. He pulls her off Ramsay’s cooling body and takes the dirk from her, sits her on the edge of the bed. He uses the covers to wipe the blood from her hands and face, where she hadn’t noticed splatters settling into her skin, and asks, “Where are your furs? Your heaviest furs?”

Still incapable of speech, she points to the wardrobe.

A moment later, the weight of warmth wraps around her shoulders. Theon stoops to examine her and his hands cover her small ones. “We need to go now, Jeyne,” he says, and her name rolling off his tongue is a reminder that she is not alone, she is in the vast sky with the chatter of birds. She nods and he helps her stand. “Whatever you do, keep walking. If I stop, keep walking. If I don’t follow you, keep walking. If someone calls out, keep walking. Do you understand?” She nods again and lets him guide her to the door.

Theon is careful to close the latch behind them and, one arm around her waist, takes her down the steps and into halls she has not seen before. They don’t encounter anyone on the way, no one at all, the castle eerily quiet, swirling only with ghosts of the past.

“Where is everyone?” she asks, surprised by how brittle and weak her voice sounds against stone walls.

“Jon Snow is riding for us,” he replies. “Everyone’s been dismissed but the Bastard Boys. The way out should be empty.”

“Way out? The gates?”

Theon’s laugh is mirthless. “The sewers, m’lady.”

She curls a hand around her unborn child and says, “Will it be safe?”

“You just slit Ramsay Bolton’s throat. Nowhere will ever be safe until Roose Bolton is dead and all of the Bolton army has been destroyed.”

;

(keep walking.)

 (keep walking, weary legs, parched throat.)

 ( _keep walking, but only if he’s beside me, only if he’s beside me_.)

;

The stench of the sewers, rotting, sulphurous, reminds her of Ramsay. She heaves and bile comes up, adding to her nausea. Theon holds back open dark curls and runs a gloved hand over her forehead. “We’ll be outside the city soon,” he assures her.

A few minutes later, a howl rises into the sky. She turns to him with unasked queries. “The smell will mask our scent,” he promises. “The dogs won’t find us.”

She trusts him enough to keep going, one foot before the other, the hem of her gown stained with red and black and blood and dirt. The grate of the opening of the sewer is clogged with filth, but Theon digs deep into it with both arms and pulls up the metal bars. He helps her through and follows her into the fresh air and toughened snow, where both gulp greedily at the sudden cleanliness.

“Keep walking?” she asks him like a child lost.

“Keep walking,” he tells her.

They keep walking.

;

Dusk falls before either of them are prepared, hungry and exhausted. Their way has been uninterrupted, heading deeper and deeper into the woods. Occasionally, they hear barks in the distance and cling to each other, for warmth and protection and home. She replays in her mind the way Ramsay had felt, still and unbreathing under her, the touch of the dirk driving into him.

When she notices Theon shivering, she draws him close under her thick furs and they walk together, bumping legs and holding arms.

“How far?” she asks.

“I don’t know. Until we find someone.”

“What if we find _them_?”

Theon shakes his head, “We won’t,” but lines appear on his forehead.

;

They press together in the cold dark under the furs, not daring to make a fire, not daring to fall asleep.

His lips are soft on hers, a small relief in the frozen wasteland.

“When I was in the Iron Islands, no older than Rickon, my sister and I found a cave out by the coast. We were in a little boat we’d made ourselves, so proud and stupid. We hid inside the cave, making up stories and pretending to find mermaids and mermen, hunting creatures under the sea all day. We hadn’t realized that the tide was coming in. But it did and it washed away our boat and left us stranded in the cave for hours. Then hours turned into a day, and another. We were starving and thirsty, at each other’s throats when we saw the first torch of our uncle come to save us.”

“Are we stranded in a cave now?”

“It doesn’t matter, Jeyne, because you are the torch.”

;

She doesn’t realize she has fallen asleep, but in her dreams, she is drowning in saltwater, choking, her nose and mouth clogged up with seaweed. And she’s shouting for Theon, but there’s no air in her throat and she can’t see anything, anything. The waves are playing with her, throwing her against each other, smashing her into boulders

“Jeyne!”

She gasps awake to Theon shaking her shoulders, feverish and agitated.

“Jeyne, I hear dogs. I hear men. We need to go!”

She manages to stand, eyelids dropping and legs uncooperative. Theon steadies her under the furs and takes off quicker than she would have thought possible in the stiff board of ice her body has become in her few restless hours of sleep. But she follows; keep walking keep walking keep walking.

She hears them too, the dogs. They bark and howl and behind them is the sound of men with swords and leashes. She quickens her pace, but her back hurts and her stomach feels much too delicate to trouble with and she doubles over for breath within minutes.

“We need to go,” Theon urges and they’re walking again, as fast as she can, until the growling noises get nearer, reverberating in her core. Then they’re running, the woods spinning around them and the white of snow mocking.

“I… need to… stop,” she wheezes, falling to her knees, knowing she’s failed but unable to keep walking anymore.

Theon steps up with the dirk in hand before her in what attempts to be a protective stance but looks more like a hurt little boy waiting to be rescued by someone who knows what they’re doing. She can only imagine how she looks herself, belly swollen, face pale, dress slathered in dry blood and sewage.

The first dog jumps into the clearing with its fangs bared and eyes unfocused. She recognizes it instantly, a big disgusting thing with patches missing; she’d seen Ramsay feeding it often. Theon moves forward and she wants to scream at him to stop, but it’s too late because the dog has spotted them. No, not them, just him. When the other dog joins the first, almost immediately, both hurtle forward.

Man and dog collide and she flinches, ugly sobs racking her body, long wails, finally setting them free. She knows how much noise she’s making and she doesn’t care- it’s over, it’s all over. Theon with his small dirk fighting off Ramsay’s rabid dogs, and she can only sit here and wait her turn to be devoured at last, the final morsel. Her fingers scratch in futility at the solid ground, nails splintering as she tries to pull herself up and defend against the dogs.

This is what it all led to, the gods laughing from their perch.

;

The sound of the first arrow whistling past her ears is foreign, nearly drowned out by her own shrieking as one of the dogs stalks near her. It’s only when it embeds in the dog’s eye that she can clearly make out what the shape is. Another one whizzes past her, and with a pup’s yelp, the second dog falls dead.

Ignoring the arrows and where they came from, she clambers on her palms and knees to Theon’s unmoving form.

“Theon, please, _please_! Wake up! You have to keep walking!” she yells in his face, but his chest is still. She pounds both fists against his heart until someone circles her wrists with large warm hands, stopping the beating.

“Jeyne? Jeyne Poole?” Jon Snow asks, his dark eyes meeting her hysterical ones. “You’re okay now, you’re safe.”

For the first time in what feels like eons, Jeyne breathes in the friendly company.

Beside her, she hears a sound sweeter than her own breath: Theon’s inhale.


End file.
